The goal of computerized information servers is to provide a system that encourages use by subscribers, provides access to a large range of information, and which is flexible and inexpensive for information publishers. Computerized information services which exist today include Prodigy, Compuserve, and Dialog. Typically, the user either pays a monthly fee or a connect time fee for the most basic service and additional or special services are provided for additional fees.
All of the above mentioned computer services require two way communications between the user and the information server in order to service each new request by the user. In other words, the user sends requests, and then selected data is transmitted individually to that user in response to his/her request. This two way "query based" communication scheme is also prevalent in other types of information servers. For instance, the "pay per view" services provided by cable television companies allow a subscriber to call the company and request a movie.
The company then sends a signal to the subscriber's television signal decoder to enable it to decode the program on a particular channel during the period of time associated with the requested movie. In this case, the "information" (a program or movie) is being transmitted in any case, but subscribers are only provided access to the program if they pay a special fee.
Two major distinctions between the present invention and the prior art query based information servers are (1) the present invention has a bandwidth that is thousands of times of greater than the prior art systems, thereby enabling high speed, low cost distribution of information, and (2) the present invention greatly reduces the amount of two-way communication required between subscribers and the information server by automatically transmitting information that responds to most anticipated "requests" by subscribers. Only those subscriber requests not satisfied by the automatically transmitted information need to be conveyed to the information server.
The goal of the present invention is to provide widespread, high speed access to a virtual omniscient database having typically well in excess of a terabyte (10.sup.12 bytes) of data. Using a data channel capable of transmitting, say, 1.5 megabytes of data per second, the present invention can provide virtually instantaneous access to about a 100 megabytes of information, high speed access (e.g., within two hours) to about a gigabyte of information, and can provide medium speed access, with perhaps 12 or 24 hour turn-around, to perhaps 100 terabytes of information. Furthermore, such access can be provided to a very large set of users without having to use a large number of data channels.
The large bandwidth of the present invention's information server enables the system to provide subscribers with multimedia programming, including video and audio programming. This is unlike current query based information servers, whose low bandwidth makes the distribution of video and audio programming impractical. The ability of the present invention to distribute information in multimedia form makes it much more attractive to both subscribers and potential information publishers, including advertisers.
It is important to note that while a user has access to perhaps a terabtye, or even 100 terabytes or more, of data, the total amount of data that systems in accordance with the present invention system can transmit in any one day is much more limited, as will be described below. This is not unlike visiting the main library of a major university, such as Yale or Harvard University, having stacks containing several million volumes of books. Having "access" to all those books every single day does not means that a user can receive them all in one day, nor does it mean that all the users can receive all the books in a single day. Nevertheless, each particular book (file or program) is available on relatively short notice, and having access to such a large collection of books (data) is still very useful.
The present invention also has tremendous cost advantages compared with information distribution using compact disks (CDs), and is believed to have distribution costs on the order of one thousand times less than any competing distribution media. The present invention eliminates both the need to generate "master" disks and the need to manufacture any physical media. Since distribution is accomplished by broadcasting, the actual costs for "publishing" a million copies of an average length novel (i.e., distributing it to a million subscribers) would be on the order of just a few dollars, versus a cost on the order a dollar or more per copy for printing either CDs or traditional books, plus similar costs for the physical distribution, resulting in traditional distribution costs totalling millions of dollars. Furthermore, updates to previously distributed information are also distributed at equally low cost using the present invention, in contrast with CD based publishing which requires mailing or otherwise physically producing and distributing new CDs to all previous purchasers.